PARTICIPANTS at this year’s African Energy Indaba 2020, held 2-3 March at the CTICC, included the Central Energy Fund Group.
The CEF is responsible for five subsidiaries which operate across the entire energy sector value chain, making up the CEF Group of Companies.
These include: Petro SA, The Petroleum Agency, iGas, The African Exploration Mining and Financing Corporation (AEMFC) and The Strategic Fuel Fund (SFF). With energy being front and centre of the nation’s psyche, CBN’s editor posed the following questions to Jacky Mashapu, Manager, Corporate Affairs at CEF Group.
Q: What insights did you gain from your participation in the African Energy Indaba?
A: As CEF Group of companies, we are proud to have been part of this ground breaking and energy platform where Africans provided African energy solutions to African energy problems. Our participation at this event could not have come at a better time when the CEF Group is embarking on a campaign to drive investments in the energy value chain geared to drive the South African economy and create much needed job opportunities.
Q: With whom did you engage and what were the outcomes?
A: We engaged various key stakeholders in the sector in our quest to lay a solid foundation to address the challenges that lies ahead in the security of South Africa’s energy future.
Q: With coal having a questionable future, what efforts are being made by the CEF to promote other forms of energy for electricity generation, besides wind and solar?
I am particularly interested in iGas and the utilisation of abundant supplies of natural gas as an alternative fuel for power generation.
There have been a number of successful conversions of coal fired power stations to natural gas in the USA, with substantial benefits to the environment and operational and maintenance costs. As many of our coal fired stations are coming to the end of their useful lives, it seems opportune to explore conversion technology, especially as the gas pipeline from Mozambique isn’t that far away from many of the existing stations, and the R300bn cost to Eskom to make its coal fired power stations compliant with environmental targets is unlikely to get the nod in the current crisis.
Would you like to comment?
A: The conversion of coal fired power stations to gas is an option that CEF/iGas and Eskom are engaging on. The gas supply for this is a key driver and with the Pande/Temane reserves going into decline*, other sources of gas are also being pursued.
I cannot comment on Eskom’s environmental targets. Gas fired power stations have higher efficiencies and lower emissions when compared to coal. Whilst gas is not as clean as renewables, it provides fully dispatchable baseload power which is currently required to support the national electricity grid, given the ageing coal fleet.
Q: To what extent is the EPD promoting the commercialisation of alternative energy storage technologies? All of the seven solar installations in the Northern Cape utilise molten salt technology but there are others which are being trialled overseas in places such as Morocco, such as using molten aluminium and Stirling engines to drive generators.
A: The molten salt energy storage technology is compatible with CSP plants and there is a bigger need for energy storage for PV and wind plant. EPD is engaging with project developers for lithium and vanadium storage technologies. The vanadium batteries are attractive because of the potential for local beneficiation as South Africa is well endowed with vanadium. There are still more technology risks for the vanadium storage than lithium so we are looking at both (because of the vanadium abundance in South Africa as already mentioned).
Q: There have been reports that the Pebble Bed reactor programme could be resurrected and small scale nuclear plants appears to be gaining international traction. Can you elaborate on the CEF’s position on nuclear?
A: Nuclear is not part of CEF’s mandate. However, the technology development to smaller modular generators in nuclear is a welcome development as it will hopefully reduce the cost and complexity of these clean energy plants and make it an attractive option for South Africa to consider as part of its future energy mix.
* According to the Endeavor website,(www.endeavor-energy.com/case-studies/pande-gas-pipeline-mozambique/) the gas fields at Pande and Temane have a proven reserve capacity of 2.6 Tcf – sufficient to supply the pipeline for a minimum of 25 years from first gas with an uncompressed capacity of 120 MGJ (million giga Joules) per annum. The pipeline has been designed to allow gas flow to be doubled with the installation of mid and quarter point compression. With projects like Mozambique LNG and Rovuma, as well as the giant Brulpadda discovery led by Total offshore, natural gas must surely become a front runner in providing a cleaner, more efficient energy source for South Africa in the future. Ed.
